Asuka River Stepping Stones

Hopping across on stones set in the riverbed

On the Asuka River at Inabuchi survives a crossing made of nothing but a line of stones. Instead of a bridge, you hop from stone to stone across the riverbed to the other bank.

There are two crossings, one upstream and one downstream. The upstream one is surrounded by trees and the downstream one by rice fields. They have been selected as a Nara Prefecture Landscape Asset.

The "stone bridge" of the Man'yōshū

Ishibashi, "stone bridge," is an old word for stepping stones like these. The Man'yōshū (Japan's oldest anthology of poetry) contains the following poem.

Asukagawa / asu mo wataramu / ishibashi no / tōki kokoro wa / omohoenu kamo (Book 11, poem 2701)
"The Asuka River I will cross again tomorrow: like its close-set stepping stones, I cannot imagine my heart ever growing distant."

Asuka Village's explanation says it is not known whether the "stone bridge" in this poem refers to this spot. It adds that in the Man'yō era, people seem to have used the image of stepping stones to express the bond between a man and a woman.

Stones crossed every day become a way of describing the relationship between two people. The poem preserves a feeling from a time when there were no bridges.

The one that remains

There are said to have once been five or six stepping-stone crossings on the upper Asuka River. Most were washed away, and Asuka Village explains that this is the only one that survives in good condition.

Visiting

It was designated a Historic Site by Asuka Village on 1 April 1977.

It is on the way to the Inabuchi terraced rice fields and the Tomb of Minabuchi no Shōan. You cannot cross when the river is high. The stones are slippery when wet, so watch your step.